Getting Out

2

Mandy had taken the day off from work. She’d managed to wake up early enough to call in, doing her best impression of a sore throat. “I can come in if you really need me,” she’d said. “But I think I might be contagious. You don’t want to see what I just did to the toilet.”

“All right, all right, spare us the details,” her boss had said, laughing. “Come in tomorrow if you’re feeling better. Make sure you call me at the end of the day to let me know how you’re doing. I’ll have to get Rachel to cover your shift, shit…”

Mandy had let out a big sigh of relief and let her head fall back on her pillow. She’d fallen back into half-drunk dreams, where nothing seemed to happen and everything felt static and strange.

At noon, she woke up again, her head pounding from the beers she’d had the night before at the bar. She knocked over the lamp from her nightstand getting out of bed, and stepped right onto a glass of water that she must have left on the floor the night before.

Stumbling into the bathroom, she flicked the light switch, but nothing happened. That was weird. Maybe the bulb was out. She pulled open the blinds to let in enough light to find the aspirin bottle in the medicine cabinet.

She shook out a handful, not bothering to count them, and swallowed them with a glass of water that had been sitting out for probably a week.

She stumbled into the kitchen, where she flipped the light switch. No lights again. She cursed under her breath. The power must be out again in the apartment building. It hadn’t happened in a while.

The last time it had gone out, she’d been living with Ted, her boyfriend of five years, who she’d just broken up with.

She shuddered at the memory of her and Ted huddling under a blanket, playing cards with a flashlight propped up like a lantern.

The memories were still fresh and painful. That was why she’d been out drinking last night with some friends from her old job, who’d promised to take her out and make her forget all about her problems. It hadn’t quite worked out like that, and the main thing Mandy remembered from the end of the night was crying in someone’s arms, drunkenly sobbing about Ted. Ted was long gone, out somewhere in California with his new girlfriend.

Despite her headache, the power outage, and her breakup, not to mention the shitty job she was barely holding onto, Mandy was a woman of internal resources. She decided right then and there to get things going today. She surveyed the apartment, which was a disaster. Normally clean and pristine, it was now full of ice cream containers that she hadn’t even bothered to throw out. The dirty dishes piled up out of the sink and onto the counter.

She poured coffee into the automatic coffee maker and hit the button before remembering that the power was out.

There was a knock at the door, loud and forceful.

“Who is it?” she said sleepily, winding through the mess on the floor of her apartment towards the door.

“Who is it?” she said again, peering through the peephole.

“Mrs. Kerns,” came the reply.

Mrs. Kerns was an older retired woman who lived on the same floor as Mandy. It was just the three of them on the second floor: Mandy, Mrs. Kerns, and a single man named Max, who Mandy hadn’t ever exchanged more than a few words with. He always seemed so serious, and perhaps a little too disgruntled to have a friendly conversation with.

Mandy groaned internally. She didn’t want to deal with Mrs. Kerns right now. Sure, she was a nice old lady, in most respects, but she was not the type of person that Mandy wanted to deal with when she was hung over. And surely Mrs. Kerns would want Mandy to contact the landlord or something.

Mandy paused before opening the door, trying to fix something of a smile on her face. Then she remembered she shouldn’t be waking up at noon, and she sure as hell looked like she’d just woken up. She remembered vaguely calling work and pretending to be sick, so she tried to fix her face into whatever a “sick” expression was before opening the door.

“Mrs. Kerns,” she said, trying to make her voice sound a little scratchy, opening the door wide.

“What’s happened to you, dear?” said Mrs. Kerns. “Did you lose power too? Why aren’t you at work?”

Mandy felt immediately overwhelmed with the peppering questions, and wished she’d just pretended she hadn’t been at home. Why didn’t she think of that? It wasn’t like Mrs. Kerns would have seen that the lights were on.

“I don’t have power either,” said Mandy, after a long pause. “I’m sick.”

She hoped that would cover her disarray.

“Might I come in, dear?” said Mrs. Kerns, in that pushy way that older ladies could sometimes so naturally be.

“Um,” said Mandy. “It’s a little messy.”

“My back is killing me, and I left the cane in my apartment.”

Sighing, Mandy stepped aside to let Mrs. Kerns into the apartment.

“My God!” exclaimed Mrs. Kerns upon seeing the horrible mess.

“Yeah,” said Mandy. “Sorry about the mess… It’s been a tough week.”

“Oh, yes, I almost forgot… I heard about Ted.”

Did the whole building know her personal business? Did everyone know that she’d caught Ted cheating on her, talking to his online girlfriend over the internet? Did they all know that Mandy wasn’t exactly sure who’d broken up with who, whether Ted had left her or whether she’d thrown him out of the house?

The two of them sat down on the couch. Mandy hurried to move aside her half-opened laptop and some old magazines that she’d partially torn up in a bad mixture of anger and depression.

“I was going to call the landlord soon,” said Mandy, anticipating Mrs. Kerns’s next question.

“I already did,” said Mrs. Kerns, in a matter of fact way. “Well, I tried to, but the phones are all dead.”

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“I’m not that old, am I?” said Mrs. Kerns. “Of course I do.”

“Let me try my phone. I’ll be back in a second.”

She went into her bedroom to get her phone. She picked it up, and noticed that the screen was dead.

She went back into the living room.

“That’s strange,” she said, sitting back down on the couch. “I remember distinctly that I charged it last night at the, um, bar.”

“Everything’s dead,” said Mrs. Kerns.

“What do you mean everything’s dead?”

“All the machines. All the electronics. None of them work. I’ve been downstairs to see Alison, and none of her things work either. And I even looked out to the other buildings. There isn’t a single light on. But the strangest thing is that if you look out to the other buildings—I can see over to Downing Street from my living room window—none of the lights are on either. And the Nevins are always home, with all the lights always on.”

“Hmm,” said Mandy. “I guess the whole town lost power. I mean, that’s happened before, but usually it’s when there’s a storm…”

Mrs. Kerns shook her head. “There wasn’t a storm.”

“Maybe a transformer or something?” said Mandy. She only vaguely knew what a transformer was, but she knew it had something to do with electricity.

Mrs. Kerns shook her head. “I don’t know. But I’m worried. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Mandy didn’t know what to think, but she was starting to get nervous. “This is really weird,” she said. “Oh, what about the radio?”

Mrs. Kerns shook her head again. “I tried,” she said. “It doesn’t work. Just like all the machines. I guess my father was right. He was always telling us that these gadgets wouldn’t save us.”

“There’s something!” said Mandy. “I heard something outside. Sounds like cars.”

They both stopped speaking.

Mandy moved to the window and pushed the slats of the blinds aside to peer outside to the parking lot. Most of the cars were gone. Most of the residents were at work, after all. Her own car sat there, a beat up old Honda Civic with dents all over it. It must have been at least fifteen years old, but that was what Mandy could afford with her waitressing job.

They could clearly hear the sound of car engines approaching. But Mandy didn’t see anything yet. There was something odd about the sound. They sounded bigger, beefier than normal engines.

“Someone’s coming,” whispered Mandy.

“Shh,” said Mrs. Kerns.

A single truck pulled slowly into the parking lot. It didn’t look like any truck that Mandy would have seen in her normal life. It was a military style truck, something like a beefy pickup. It was painted a solid light green color, without any camouflage. There were two or three men up in the front cab, and a man in the back manning a huge turret gun.

Mandy gasped. She’d never seen anything like this in the United States. It reminded her of the trip she’d taken in high school to Mexico for spring break. There, she’d been shocked to see the police driving around town in pickup trucks with guns mounted on the back. Honestly, though, she’d been too drunk to remember much else from the trip. Not that she was a big drinker. She’d barely had a drink since she’d dropped out of college after her first disastrous semester, except for yesterday night.

Mandy watched for a moment as the truck slowly circled the parking lot. The man in the back of the truck seemed to be scanning the area. For what, Mandy didn’t know.

There weren’t any markings on the truck that she could see.

The men looked like they might be from the United States Army, but she couldn’t get a good look at them.

She had a bad feeling in her stomach, and it wasn’t the beer she drank last night. She kept moving her face away from the window, worried that they would see her.

“What’s going on?” said Mrs. Kerns, starting to get up slowly from the couch.

“Shh,” whispered Mandy, waving her hand for Mrs. Kerns to stay where she was.

Mandy didn’t know who these men were or what they were doing here, but she had a feeling that it wouldn’t be good if they knew she was here… at least not until she knew what they were up to.